Song of Susannah - Stephen King [154]
It’s how they breathe, Mia thought. That’s how they breathe when they’re wearing their—
In her growing dismay, she had largely forgotten about Susannah Dean and completely about Detta. So when Detta Walker came forward —hell, when she leaped forward —there was no way Mia could stop her. She watched her arms shoot out seemingly of their own accord and saw her fingers sink into the plump cheek of the woman in the silver lamé gown. The woman shrieked, but oddly, the others, Sayre included, laughed uproariously, as if this were the funniest thing they’d ever seen in their lives.
The mask of humanity pulled away from the low woman’s startled eye, then tore. Susannah thought of her final moments on the castle allure, when everything had frozen and the sky had torn open like paper.
Detta ripped the mask almost entirely away. Tatters of what looked like latex hung from the tips of her fingers. Beneath where the mask had been was the head of a huge red rat, a mutie with yellow teeth growing up the outside of its cheeks in a crust and what looked like white worms dangling from its nose.
“Naughty girl,” said the rat, shaking a roguish finger at Susannah-Mio. Its other hand was still holding hers. The thing’s mate—the low man in the garish tuxedo—was laughing so hard he had doubled over, and when he did, Mia saw something poking out through the seat of his pants. It was too bony to be a tail, but she supposed it was, all the same.
“Come, Mia,” Sayre said, drawing her forward. And then he leaned toward her, peering earnestly into her eyes like a lover. “Or is it you, Odetta? It is, isn’t it? It’s you, you pestering, overeducated, troublesome Negress.”
“No, it be me, you ratface honky mahfah!” Detta crowed, and then spat into Sayre’s face.
Sayre’s mouth opened in a gape of astonishment. Then it snapped shut and twisted into a bitter scowl. The room had gone silent again. He wiped the spit from his face—from the mask he wore over his face—and looked at it unbelievingly.
“Mia?” he asked. “Mia, you let her do this to me? Me, who would stand as your baby’s godfather?”
“You ain’t jack shit!” Detta cried. “You suck yo’ ka-daddy’s cock while you diddle yo’ fuckfinger up his poop-chute and thass all you good fo’! You—”
“Get RID of her!” Sayre thundered.
And before the watching audience of vampires and low men in the Dixie Pig’s front dining room, Mia did just that. The result was extraordinary. Detta’s voice began to dwindle, as if she were being escorted out of the restaurant (by the bouncer, and by the scruff of the neck). She quit trying to speak and only laughed raucously, but soon enough that, too, was gone.
Sayre stood with his hands clasped before him, looking solemnly at Mia. The others were also staring. Somewhere behind the tapestry of the knights and their ladies at feast, the low laughter and conversation of some other group continued.
“She’s gone,” Mia said at last. “The bad one is gone.” Even in the room’s quiet she was hard to hear, for she spoke in little more than a whisper. Her eyes were timidly cast down, and her cheeks had gone deathly white. “Please, Mr. Sayre…sai Sayre…now that I’ve done as you ask, please say you’ve told me the truth, and I may have the raising of my chap. Please say so! If you do, you’ll never hear from the other one again, I swear it on my father’s face and my mother’s name, so I do.”
“You had neither,” Sayre said. He spoke in a tone of distant contempt. The compassion and mercy for which she begged owned no space in his eyes. And above them, the red hole in the center of his forehead filled and filled but never spilled.
Another pain, this one the greatest so far, sank its teeth into her. Mia staggered, and this time Sayre didn’t bother steadying her. She went to her knees before him, put her hands on the rough, gleaming